


more alike than you think

by kenopsia (indie)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Coda, Divorce, Divorced Co-parenting, Mutual Pining, spoilers for HLV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-09 02:31:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indie/pseuds/kenopsia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock’s eyes were shadowed. “Because you chose her,” he said.</p><p>John wanted to break something. He wanted to systematically break a lot of somethings, but he was a solider and an adult and he was painfully aware of what a man could do when he let his anger get the better of him. Sherlock’s eyes were trained on him, large and pleading on Mary’s behalf. </p><p>“Some mistakes you only have to make once,” John said on the exhale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: this fic is not particularly kind to Mary.

“Why is _she_ like that?”

Sherlock’s eyes were shadowed. “Because you chose her,” he said.

John wanted to break something. He wanted to systematically break a lot of somethings, but he was a solider and an adult and he was painfully aware of what a man could do when he let his anger get the better of him. Sherlock’s eyes were trained on him, large and pleading on Mary’s behalf.

Mary was probably looking at him the same way, but he didn’t want to glance her way to confirm that.

“Some mistakes you only have to make once,” John said on the exhale.

Mary made a ragged, wounded noise, and John felt a first curl around his heart in a bruising grip. “Sherlock,” he said, voice cracking on the single syllable, “a moment, please.”

“John,” he said, but John fixed him with a murderous glare, and Sherlock swallowed audibly. “I’ll be outside, if you need me.”

John stared at the door, counting to fifty to be sure he had himself under control before he looked back at Mary. She was just as beautiful as he’d always found her. “John,” she implored, softly.

“I don’t think there is anything to say, Mary, but I’d love to be wrong.”

“I – I love you, John Watson.”

“What I meant was, feel free to tell me you did not shoot my best friend.”

Mary’s mouth went slack, wobbly. John’s instinct an hour ago would have been to scoop her up, smooth out all of her trembling with the blunt soft pressure of his body.

“You heard what he said, it’s true John – I panicked, but I didn’t want to kill him.”

“You took a chest shot at my _best man_ ,” John said, starting at a civilized volume and ending on a roar. He could feel the thrum of his pulse in his neck, the tips of his fingers. His whole body was a throbbing, angry rush. “Any assassin knows that if you’re aiming for the chest, you’re prepared to kill.”

“You and I are the same, John!” she said, sounding desperate, but the line of her mouth had hardened, and her eyes were steely. “You’ve killed for Sherlock, I know you have. I read your blog! Good thing a _mysterious Samaritan_ came by to _shoot the bad cabbie!_ That’s what you _do_ for love.”

“For Sherlock Holme’s _life,_ ” John bit out. “Not… self-preservation.”

“If you knew. If you knew what I’ve done, you wouldn’t love me.”

John swallowed around the glass in his throat. “Maybe. Or maybe your past was your business; but you shot Sherlock in my present.”

“Someone had to take care of Magnussen.” 

“I would agree, except…” And there it is. He cannot forget, but it recedes like the tide for seconds at a time before it comes roaring back, stoking his anger like gasoline on a fire. “You _shot_ Sherlock Holmes. Not to save your life, not to save mine. To buy you some time to deal with a man _you didn’t kill in the end anyways._ ”

“Sherlock understands,” she said, accusatory, “if the man I actually shot has forgiven me, why are you so bent on being a broken record? He explained why. I wouldn’t have shot him for the hell of it.”

John’s fingers went to his buttons, and Mary watched him with a confused expression as he unbuttoned his shirt down to his trousers, and tossed it to the floor.

“Oh.”

“That’s right, _oh_. Before he would let me sit in that chair, he made me put this on. He may have called it _surgery,_ but he was afraid enough that it might happen again.”

“It wouldn’t!”

“The thing is, you and Sherlock Holmes are more alike than you might think,” John snarled, standing in his trousers and bullet-proof vest. “Turns out you’re both willing to kill him to keep me happy.”

On the street, there was a clatter, and sirens. “Sherlock!” John called, lunging towards his room.

Mary was still staring at him with a hanging jaw. John let the door slam behind them. 

*

In the ambulance, the paramedics had to start Sherlock’s heart up again and John bit his tongue hard enough to spill hot, coppery blood into his mouth to restrain himself from elbowing in.

John had done that once this week, actually, when he’d barreled into a room after hearing a gunshot. The door had been open, but it wouldn’t have mattered if it hadn’t been, or locked, or running ten thousand volts. Magnussen had been out cold across from him and if it hadn’t have been for the blood seeping out of Sherlock, John would have killed him then.

He punched the nine key with short, vicious jabs and set it on speaker so he could shout for help while he held pressure on the wound with one hand, the other curled under Sherlock’s jugular. “Damn it, Sherlock,” he’d sworn, pulled by the conflicting needs to keep Sherlock’s blood in his body and restart his heart with brute force.

In the end, he’d pumped against his heart in a tempo that sprang to his mind when he leapt from sleep and in moments of peril, one thigh pressed at an awkward angle against his wound in an attempt to also staunch the flow that he could hardly devote ten percent of his attention to with his hands against Sherlock’s chest and eventually the crack of one, and then two broken ribs.

Now, he let nausea rise in a way it didn’t when he was in control. At least the least time he’d known Sherlock’s life was in the hands of someone who put his continued safety above almost all else.

In a hospital room for the second time in seven days, Sherlock woke up with his wife’s name on his lips.

“No, Sherlock,” John’s rasped out. “She’s gone, she’s gone.” Tears sprang to his eyes and he blinked them back.

“Saved my life,” Sherlock said, pausing between each word for a long time.

Something came from John: a laugh or a sob. “No, Sherlock. The medical professionals did that.”

“Ambulance,” Sherlock said, swallowed.

“Yes, an ambulance picked you up.” John pressed his hands to his face, trying to wipe away the exhaustion he was sure was etched into his face, complicated as the coastline.

“Eight minutes,” Sherlock huffed with inadequate air, his mouth not coming quite back together when he stopped.

“Can you – you need to rest.”

Even on generous doses of morphine and freshly returned from the dead, Sherlock did not go easily. For half an hour he attempted, in bits and pieces, to insist: _Mary, your wife, saved, not dead, marks – man._

*

John tried to call Lestrade, but he was so out of sorts he held his phone up to his face for several minutes before he realized that it wasn’t ringing.

On the second try he actually hit _dial_ and his call went to voicemail.

“Greg – it’s John, I need to see you.”

*

When Sherlock was awake and lucid, he tried again to explain it. Eight minutes, he said, the average London ambulance.

John blinked at him, and almost laughed. “Even dead you’re more brilliant than everyone else, huh?”

Sherlock looked at him searchingly, and John was faced with the familiar sensation that Sherlock was spreading him out across a tale like an old map, well thumbed but with undiscovered corners. “Where did you think the broken ribs come from, you prat?”

“Well, the paramedics, eventually.”

“Sherlock, from the moment I heard a gunshot, there may have been ten seconds before I was in that room, and that’s being extremely generous with time. We _did_ wait those minutes, I don’t know how long.”

Sherlock turned his head to press his face into the pillow and John sat vigil as he faded back into sleep again. They had the conversation every time he surfaced to consciousness for three days. On the last, he said, “Where’s Mary?”

“Gone,” John said, molars ready to crack under the tension.

*

Greg came to visit. Mycroft sent forty men to patrol the hospital, one standing vigil outside the door like some kind of gargoyle. Molly Hooper lit a candle in the windowsill. John pointed out that Sherlock wasn’t religious and she shrugged and said maybe they could afford to hedge their bets. John slept in armchairs.

John woke up thinking _where’s Mary?_ and had to remind himself that she was away.

Mycroft visited, finally, and seemed not to be able to look at Sherlock. Instead, he spoke to John: “We have her in maximum security, but it is also a very private facility. They colloquially call it _maximum comfort._ She is dining with diplomats, and CEOs.”

John’s throat hurt and he’d worn the same jumper for days. “I’ll need to see her.”

Mycroft looked soft around the edges, or perhaps John’s eyes had given up after a week of nineteen hour days. “I will have it arranged.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, I thought I could bring it home in one chapter, but I might have been wrong. I'll do my best. Thanks for reading!

“I love you,” he told Mary Watson, just to be clear. “I think I’ll always love you.”

Mary Watson paced like a wild thing; why was John _always_ giving his heart away to wild things? They never took care of it.

“Me? Or the child?” she said, stilling in front of him, separated by plexiglass. Even in the navy blue shift, disarmed and imprisoned, Mycroft had refused to let him touch her, as if she might tear his jugular with her teeth if it came down to it. John doubted that very much.

“Both,” John said firmly, nausea rising. “Sherlock doesn’t want to see you imprisoned.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And yet, here I am.”

“He’s been shot. He’s in critical care. He’s hardly lucid.” John rattled off, like the fact that he was standing in front of her was about facts he had listed off and not the fact that he felt like a man whose homeland had been razed to the ground – longing for a place that could never exist again.

“So why mention? Am I supposed to die here? Incubate your child and then wilt away?” Mary was sneering by the end. It hurt to look at her, with her tired eyes and restless movements. In another life he’d be spoiling her right now, overbearing where she was firm in her decisions to stay independent to the end. Now, she looked frail, fingernails ragged and the roots of her hair showing.

“I wanted you to know,” John said. “I wanted to come talk to you because you’re my wife. What did you expect to happen?”

“Oh, you want to know now?”

John shrugged. “I was too angry to be rational. You’d be inhuman to blame me for that. But right now, right here, the floor is all yours.”

“I… panicked.” Mary said. “I didn’t want to kill Sherlock, and I couldn’t kill Magnussen because I still don’t know what sort of files he has in his vaults. I had a few seconds to act.”

“And Sherlock? He helped you plan your wedding, Mary, did it just seem fair to take his life as collateral damage?”

“I fell back on a lifetime of training. I didn’t want him to die, but I had to incapacitate him to the point where you would stay with him, rather than give chase for an unknown shooter. I saw two paths in front of me, and I chose the one that let me keep you. I had hoped he would be okay,” she says, and so far it’s been the most important thing.

John touched the plexiglass with the flat of his palm. “I think Sherlock knows all of that, and I suspect that he thinks the proper place for anyone that would kill for me belongs, you know, sentry in my sleeping quarters.” John smiled on accident. “He’s demanding to see you every time he’s lucid, but we’re keeping him sedated because he wakes up swinging every time, and when he came up the last time and found himself strapped down he thrashed so hard he caused himself a lot more internal bleeding.”

When John had met Mary, she’d been in a yellow sweater that was not flattering: it washed her out, made her look lumpy. She’d come in as a patient, explained her sore throat and he’d palpated her glands until she let out a laugh so gorgeous it reverberated in his hollow spaces. “Ticklish?” he’d asked, smiling back, and she’s said, face transformed by happiness: “Sorry, sorry, I just got a job here, I wanted to test out your bedside manners this way.” John thinks about that sweater inexplicably now, wonders if it’s still at their flat or if she’d lost it somewhere along the way in the past year.

“Well, give him my best. I do hope he makes a full recovery.” Mary twists her hands together fretfully. “Am I to have a proper trial, or is Mycroft going to take care of things more efficiently?”

“You’re going to go free,” John said. “I was hoping we could discuss you staying in London, though. And, you know. The elephant in the room. You’re only here because Mycroft thinks you’re a flight risk.”

“Makes sense,” Mary said, and there was laughter in her eyes. She looked like she had two weeks ago, six months ago, like a butterfly who had landed on his finger. He’d have held his breath as long as she’d deigned to grace him with her presence. “He did have to haul me off my flight to Bulgaria.”

“I need some time, Mary, to think. Please, please don’t do anything,” John paused. Anything what? He meant, _please don’t harm baby girl Watson before we talk again,_ but the emotions were so mixed up in him he wasn’t sure he could mention her without croaking.

“Rash?” she guessed, and John tried not to let his eyes linger. She was hardly even shaped any differently.

“Permanent.”

*

John went back to Sherlock’s bedside, and a few days later they stopped sedating him. He started to thrash when he woke up, again, but Mycroft was there. Mycroft used a voice John had never heard before as he gripped his brother’s hand: “Stop,” he demanded, and John could have been knocked over by a feather when Sherlock instantly stilled.

*

Mary kept their flat, and John moved back into 221b. John had sad in his chair three weeks ago and thought _why does Sherlock expect me to come home?_

It wasn’t until Sherlock was able to flop about the couch and yell _bored_ with the impetuousness of a consulting five year old that John was able to properly grieve. He was a soldier, and he battened down the hatches during a five alarm crisis, crushing his doubts and fears and disappointments for later. Grief could be dealt with when all of his men were safe.

With Sherlock home and well enough to whine, grief crept up on John in the least opportune moments: when he made his lunch to take to the office, when he had to purchase bread from the Tescos.

And of course, coming home to Sherlock was a trial on its own, with his flickering eyes and his look that said, _I see you had a cry while doing the shopping today,_ and somehow John was still bloody _grateful_ that he didn’t use it like a weapon. When had bloody human consideration become such a kindness to him? He felt like a flea-ridden hound, just grateful that no one had kicked him today.

Sherlock, with refusing to keep up proper painkillers because they dull his brain, Sherlock who died on him and let him rebuild his life around a woman who almost shattered him – would have let John live in a world with no Sherlock. He came home two weeks after Sherlock came home from hospital to find Mary in their flat.

She held up her hands.

“Someone has to deal with Magnussen,” Sherlock said. “Sit down.”

Mary had dyed her hair. She looked like a breath of fresh air. John sat down and tried very hard to keep his breathing even as he let strategy wash over him.

“Blackmailers are easier to deal with when they’re in love with you,” Mary said, smiling at Sherlock.

Sherlock smiled back and John wanted to hit something. “I see you’re acquainted with John’s blog.”

“Actually, that one’s mostly redacted on the site. I heard that one from –” she looked over at him and he lurched to his feet.

“Sherlock! A word!”

*

John was suddenly back to square one, at Baker Street and wanting to break something. All of the somethings.

He flexed his hand to still the phantom tremors. “Don’t you think you could have…”

“I didn’t expect you to be home so early today. I would have warned you.”

Sherlock full of bullet holes and Mary carrying his child and both of them, both of them brimming with secrets. “Stop lying to me!”

“I just need you to be happy,” Sherlock snarled back, “and you will be if it kills me.”

“That’s the problem,” John said, and was suddenly aware that both of his hands were holding onto the front of Sherlock’s shirt, cloth biting into his hands from the strength of his grip, and most of his fingernails bent flat.

“That, Sherlock, is the problem.” 


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock blinked the way he had when John had said, “Mary Morstan… and you.” John privately thought of it as Sherlock rebooting after John had crashed his system.

John hadn’t let Sherlock’s collar go, but he did make an effort to soften his grip. “I need you to worry about yourself, Sherlock, because I can’t be the only one.”

Normal people didn’t have to hear that sort of thing; normal people factored their own continued existence into the way they went about their daily lives. John Watson didn’t have a normal person for a flatmate, but while he knew that the rush of adrenaline could be prioritized above his safety for short bouts of activity and crime solving, it had never occurred to him that his madman of a best friend actually had no sense of self preservation.

“Right now, there are more important things. Like Magnussen.”

John’s voice went low, deadly. “Magnussen can go to hell,” he said. Sherlock flinched. “Right now the most important thing to me is you, and…”

“And Mary,” Sherlock finished for him. “And be that as it may, I still have a case, John.”

“You’re in no condition to deal with him. Give Lady Smallwood her deposit back.”

“I can’t. He’s a bully.”

John lets out a long breath until it tapers off. “Fine time for you to find a conviction for the underdog.” 

There were footsteps, muted but audible on the other side of the door. John said through his teeth: “You might as well come in.”

And there was his infuriating, beautiful, heart-breaking wife. When he’d last been in 221b Baker Street with her, she’d looked strong, unapologetic even under the deluge. She looked just as strong now, no platitudes written into the planes of her face. He admired it even as pressure built between his temples.

Mary cut to the heart of things. “I don’t believe Magnussen actually has vaults. I’ve seen the schematics of Appledore – there are two possibilities, but I honestly believe the library of secrets is a myth.”

John scoffed.

“Are you an ex-CIA agent?” Mary frowned. “I wasn’t aware you had a secret past in espionage as well. Nice to meet you, I’m Mary.” Until that moment, John had not been aware that a proffered handshake could look so sarcastic.

John set his teeth together. Sherlock cut his eyes at John, as if asking him what to do. Resentment sparked up John’s spine. Now Sherlock wanted his opinion. Now Sherlock cared about what the hell John wanted. He flexed his hand, felt everything go calm beneath the surface like it did at the sound of gunshots, the squeal of an ambulance.

“Alright. But if there are no vaults, where do you expect he’s keeping all of his documents?”

“Method of Loci,” she said.

John peered over at Sherlock. “Isn’t that...”

He nodded sharply. “Yes. Mycroft and I both. But if I were to create an empire built on blackmail, I’d need some proof. You can’t just print whatever you like without it coming back to haunt you.”

“So he sends out for things when he needs them, but otherwise doesn’t keep files hanging around.” Mary said.

“He’s going to have to die,” Sherlock said, solemn, and Mary said nothing.

John punched out a long sharp breath that might have sounded like a laugh. “The pair of you. You can’t just decide when people need to die. You’re going to have to convict him of a crime.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “What the hell do you think Sherlock was going to do the night you broke in?”

“We were on an evidence reconnaissance mission.” John huffed.

She looked coolly disbelieving. “Be that as it may, my eventual plan is to leave him dead.”

Sherlock was thoughtful. “You’re only useful in the chain of weakness up to my brother. If I had died...”

“Would have been very sad, but useful,” Mary said, brusque. “We missed out on that chance, to strike while he thought he’d lost the thread leading to your brother.”

“You used that trick last time. The next time you die, the baddie is going to demand your head on a platter.” All of the molecules inside of John were moving too fast, clanging against each other in the most jarring symphony of biochemistry.

Sherlock, who seemed to the outside world to be outside of the world to find emotion a foreign thing, was remarkably tune in to John’s own distress after the dust settled from his fantastically inappropriate resurrection. He took John wrist in his hand, brushing his thumb against John’s wrist, the launching pad for the tremor that ran down to his fingertips.

He held on to John, but spoke to Mary. “I told you, you should have come to me.”

Mary looked away from him, her composure flickering for the first time. “I didn’t realize that was my … an option.”

“Your best option,” John said, and then, sharply, “a moment, please, Sherlock.”

Sherlock held on for a moment too long, leaning in close. “John, please consider...”

John leaned back towards him, the corner of their foreheads almost touching. “I need you… to go.”

*

“Mary, I don’t know what to do.”

She was five feet from him, breathing in and out, blinking, a bag full of automatic functions, warm and breakable and human. He moved towards her, closing the distance by a foot, and then two. As he approached her, he hesitated. “Can I… May I...”

Mary closed her eyes tight as her chin changed shape, and fell into his arms. John held her, arms around her shoulders and could feel her stomach against his own, firm and round. “I love you, but you made the wrong call, Mary.”

She nodded, her tears smearing against his neck. “Anna.”

Confusion washed across John like wakefulness, an entire state of being. “For … the baby?” he asked. “Do you want to talk about her?”

Mary was still, supported against his front like leaning dead weight. “No, John, that’s. That’s my name.”

“Anna.” John whispered, his heart giving a mournful thrash in his chest. “How much of you is real?”

“Well, the story about the chicken, in secondary,” she said, and John wheezed out a pitful laugh, letting her go. She sagged before him, red and blotchy. “Most everything that didn’t pertain to my past. I wanted to move away from it, start a family.”

“I respect that.” John said. “I want you to know that. You deserve a life, and a family. Your past does not define you, and your past may not even be shameful. My job as a soldier -- that was a government job that sometimes ended with the other man dead; same as yours. What I will never be able to move past is the fact that you spent six months welcoming Sherlock into our family, loving him, and then in a moment of panic, took a gamble on his life.”

“I can’t apologize any more than I have, John. I didn’t want to do it and I didn’t want him to die. I’m sorry. I love you; my love for you blots out everything else in the universe. If it had been you or me… it’s not even I would take a bullet for you -- you of all people know that’s dead-easy. But I would take a slow, drawn out death for you, would go POW for you.”

“I know that,” John said, wiping the tears from Mary’s face with the wrist of his jumper. “But the rest of the world exists. And I can’t stay with someone who would burn down the whole world to keep me warm -- I’m crazy about some of that world.”

“Well,” Mary said, visibly trying to shake off the vulnerability clinging to her like the moisture on her eyelashes. “We still need to deal with Magnussen. And.”

“And the baby,” John agreed, irrationally not wanting her to say it.

“One after the other, don’t you think?”

“I would like to not,” John dissented. “If you want to do something other than carry a child to term, I’d like...” he paused, unsure of his wording, and how to tread. “I'm uncomfortable with the thought of it happening too much later.”

Mary narrowed her eyes. “I’m still ready to start over in London. I was before I’d even met you. I plan on keeping her, with or without you.”

“With me,” John said. “Whatever happens with you and I… I’m still a parent.”

“Well then,” Mary said, and raised her voice for the last part: “Sherlock, get back in here and help me fix the Magnussen situation so I can put my life back together safely.”

She fixed her eyes back on John as the door creaked open, Sherlock’s unkempt hair entering the room first. “You can call it a divorce present.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for Karoliner, who is translating this fic into Chinese [here](http://www.movietvslash.com/thread-137273-1-1.html), and who got me rolling on this fic again. I hope you like it, and thanks so much! :)
> 
> I'm sorry it's been such a long wait, everyone. My main problem was trying to come at the CAM problem like a detective. In my opinion, the show cheated. I hope to get back to the grind to wrap this fic up soon, because I've told myself no more weird AUs until I do. ;)

Mycroft had asked Sherlock to leave Magnussen alone.

If only John knew what that meant. Did Mycroft have the situation well under control, or was Mycroft’s plan to let the status quo continue on, let Magnussen hold the deed to the country in his trouser pocket?

John busied himself with moving everything from Sherlock’s table while Mary made tea with trembling hands. “Not that mug,” he warned her in a low voice, and she put it back in the cupboard.

Sherlock sat at the table, hands gripping the edge of his chair with pale knuckles. “Can I get you anything for the pain?” he asked him. Sherlock’s head jerked sharply to the right, just once, and John went back to his job, wiping a damp flannel over the surface of the table to banish the most obvious of the grime.

He wanted to rib Sherlock about it, that he’d moved out and suddenly the flat was disgusting, but looking at him, pale and recovering and having recently lost his grip -- even briefly -- on his sobriety, John didn’t have the heart.

On the table, Sherlock drew four circles with his fingertip. “Mary,” he said, frowning, “John Watson. Me. Mycroft.”

John got the impression that Sherlock’s thinking had slowed to a crawl. Otherwise, he’d be flicking through his mind palace until he came up with the solution, or at least the next step, not using three dimensional space to help him think.

“Here,” Mary murmured, putting a mug at his elbow. It was probably all wrong, John thought uncharitably, before he checked himself. Mary had been making Sherlock tea for months. Just because … well, it didn’t mean the past six months hadn’t happened.

“Thank you,” Sherlock murmured.

Sherlock didn’t thank John. John figured he was white noise to Sherlock. Mary, apparently, had at least some of his focus.

They sat at the table, John holding his hot mug in still hands and Sherlock fidgeting like a child.

“He will not be swayed about Lady Smallwood,” Mary said. “He has everything he wants; why negotiate?”

“He might give up her vote… there is something he wants more.”

“Mycroft,” John said. “You’re talking about your brother. You cannot give your brother to Magnussen. Not even for a ruse. He’s too clever.”

Sherlock put the spoon from his tea into his mouth upside down and clanged it around his mouth a few times. “Is he,” he said, not really to either of them.

John sat and looked at Mary, writing her own notes on the other end of the table. When Mary finally looked up at him, she shrugged. “Don’t look at me. You already vetoed my best plan.”

This is John’s purpose: sometimes, the Gordian knot just needs a knife. “So… are we simply going to ignore the fact that a man who is, to the unwashed masses, essentially just a businessman is involved with more than his fair share of extortion?”

“He owns everyone, John. You can't imagine how vast his network is,” Mary said.

John made a rude noise. “We've dealt with one Moriarty. Doesn't it stretch the imagination a bit far to assume that two criminal masterminds owned England concurrently?”

“Power vacuum caused by Moriarty's death,” Sherlock corrected him. “Not concurrent rule.”

John tapped his foot. “All I'm saying, is, why is the answer never put the criminal on trial?”

“Because the criminal has a lot of leverage, and that doesn’t go away in prison,” Mary explained. “Putting him in prison for extortion wouldn’t keep him from … extorting Lady Smallwood. Or me. And that’s if we even could get him there.”

“Every criminal in the city can’t have the population at large in their pockets,” John insisted.

Mary shrugged, as if he were being particularly childish and she was done arguing with him. Perhaps she was right; John realized there was no use in arguing against the facts of the case, but he couldn’t seem to put it down.

“Worst brainstorming session ever is adjourned,” John said, suddenly so, so tired. Sherlock didn’t stir, but after looking back and forth between the two men at the table, Mary rose to her feet.

He nodded at her on the way out.

*

After Afghanistan, and after the dreary bedsit he’d settled into first, John Watson hadn’t had much by way of material possessions. Now, that felt like a lifetime ago, but here he was again, moved into Baker Street with almost nothing. It was almost like he’d hit the reset button on his life. After his military service, and then again after Sherlock died, moving out with his clothes and his computer and little else, letting the service Mycroft hired to remove Sherlock’s clutter take his as well. And now, again, he found himself in that place, unanchored. He’d hardly even stepped foot into his flat. He hadn’t even taken all of his clothes this time. He’d had a bag packed for some time, and a little rucksack he’d started carrying as he biked to work and he’d gone in long enough to get them.

Being back in his old room, trying to keep his breathing under control, John felt helpless, small.

John’s left hand shook until he wrapped it in the other behind him, probably looking like an idiot and obvious as a neon sign under Sherlock’s watchful eye as he stalked to the front door in parade rest.

“Where to, Watson?” Sherlock asked.

“Out,” John said, and knew Sherlock could see the angle for a fight in his posture. Maybe Sherlock didn’t have the energy to give it to him, because he kept himself boneless against the back of his chair as he went back to his business.

*

“John! You trying to sneak in here, you nutter?”

John shook his head, smiling ruefully and extending a hand. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

Bill Murray gave his hand a hard slap and used it to draw him into something like a hug, in the middle of his gym. John found himself almost flush against Bill’s bulldog chest. “I’m glad you made it,” he boomed in John’s ear, over the sounds of machines and pounding feet.

“Been meaning to stop by for a while,” John admitted, when he had retreated into his own personal space. “Just been busy since...”

“Course,” Bill said, “you went and settled down. Was a shame to miss.”

John waved him away. “I shouldn’t have scheduled my wedding so poorly. Wasn’t trying to upstage your baby.”

Bill let out a long laugh. “It’s been a real treat. He’s on the next level of extreme warfare. I haven’t slept in months.”

“Sounds like you’re living a real dream,” John said, blandly.

“Sounds like a nightmare. Kids. Apparently they rewire you. I’m already trying to convince Alice to get started on a second.”

“Oh.” John wasn’t sure what he was meant to say, not when he’d come here to get away from this line of thought. He’d had mates become dads before, but he’d never had to have this talk.  

“Anyway. I know you didn’t come in here to yap about how we’ve misplaced our bollocks. You come in here to hit something?”

“Or someone,” John said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not at my prime anymore, but I’d like to get back in fighting shape.”

Bill Murray grinned like a shark. “Let’s go a round, mate.”

*

Sherlock had given him the once over when he came in, but wisely kept his mouth shut. He looked less likely to die at the first sign of rain, but he didn’t look healthy by any means. His posture said he was listening though, and John felt something diffuse in him like the familiar scent of antiseptic and tea.

John felt temporarily flushed with a good workout and the comfortable pain that came with a good spar. He wasn’t wrong: biking and nervous pacing for the past several months had done nothing positive for him, but under the married padding he seemed to have acquired, he still had an understated strength.

The army had always kept him lean, and then Sherlock had: dashing about all hours, having to catch meals when he could, and working between his crime fighting hobby with Sherlock. Then, grief had taken over the job; when Sherlock died, he’d thrown himself into work and hadn’t had much interest in the building blocks of being sustained. Now though, he carried with him a softness he’d racked up over nights spent in, trying not to sulk over the fact that his best mate had fallen off the grid.

“I’ve been to have a work out,” John said, peeling off his sweat damp shirt. He would have stayed to shower at the gym, but he’d been in a hurry to come home with his clear head.

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed, for once in his life not cutting John off at the pass. John favoured him with a smile, faint as it was.

“Can I make you some tea, or something to eat?”

Sherlock shook his head with minimal effort, curls swinging limply around his head as he did so. He looked like he could do with a wash, but simply hadn’t had the energy. John wanted to go to him, but he stayed rooted where he was.

“Anyways. Mary works as my pressure point as it were, and _God_ , what a pompous name for threats, like he’s a creative mastermind instead of a bully, because there’s an actual threat there. I will do what he says if I want my wife to continue to live. Which. Hey, if not for the whole thing, I would have voted to say go ahead mate, you’ve got two people with very specific combat training and excellent marksmanship and the most brilliant man in the country. Bring the fight to me, why not. Could do with some excitement after all this wedding nonsense.”

Sherlock blinked at him. “You’ve quite a lot to say.”

“Yeah, well, my days turned around,” John said, feeling a little self conscious to how excited he sounded, and the speed of his speech, but still excited behind that. Being with normal people could give him a little perspective sometimes, a map for when he wandered back into Sherlock’s bizarre world. “Anyways, what was I -- oh, yeah, the three of us against the rest of the world. But all of his other threats, I mean, you remember when we met and your brother called himself your arch-nemesis? It’s like that: most people, not even politicians have secrets that big. Not everyone has someone who wants to kill them. Most people aren’t living under secret identities. I mean, some of them do, sure, but _man gets off in his private time wearing women’s footwear_ is hardly going to wreck your political career more than _MP lets newspaper mogul decide his parliament votes_.”

“That’s true enough, but the threat of exposure now is paired with the other being postponed indefinitely. That’s how blackmail works.”

John waved a hand. “But then what about everybody else? Not everyone has a fetish or a drug problem. And! You’d hoped he would use your made-up addiction against you; you hoped he’d read it in the papers.”

John felt electricity crack down his spine, feeling as if he’d stepped out of the sodden suit that had made him sluggish for months. “There’s something missing. So much of him has to be exaggeration. Look at him: he’s a cartoon. And how could he have blackmailed you with drugs if they were already in the paper?”

“Jim Moriarty was an exaggeration,” Sherlock pointed out. “But also infinitely real. Two years worth of undercover work proved that to me.”

“And your brother kept Moriarty in a cell for months,” John combated.

Sherlock looked down at John’s hands. “That shirt must have committed some grave offense,” he said.

John followed his gaze down to his own hands, where he was indeed attempting to strangle his shirt. He barked out a laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get so rabid.” He dropped it to the floor and reached behind him to grab his vest from the nape of his neck and pull it over his head. “I’ll go have a shower and see if I can be a little--”

“Don’t,” Sherlock interrupted, and John’s stomach made an unusual move at noticing that although Sherlock’s face was pointed exactly where John’s head was, his eyes were lingering on John’s bare chest. “I … it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you in action. I’m… glad… that you’re here.”

John huffed a little. “I… everything’s tits up right now,” he said, “but I’m … glad, also. To be here. I’m sorry I wasn’t when you needed me.”

“Of course you were,” Sherlock frowned. “I have the cracked ribs to prove it.”

John moved past him, hesitating as he drew near, but eventually deciding to give his shoulder a squeeze. Sherlock jolted under his touch.

“Sorry--” the said at the same time, and John ducked past him to scurry upstairs like a treed raccoon.

*

The thing was, as angry and upset and wreck as he was -- Magnussen, Mary, Sherlock, Baby Girl Watson, the fact that his mate Bill was so excited about his new son and John had been frozen in terror, unable to say oi! I’ve got one on the way, too -- he was glad to be in Baker Street. He was glad to be here with Sherlock; it felt like a kind of symettry that he would take care of Sherlock while he was on the mend, like maybe he could repay the massive debt that had always sat between them, taunting John about how Sherlock had taken him in like a stray when he’d been completely broken, unwanted, and half feral. What had Sherlock seen in him when he was all atrophied muscle and psychosis?

John showered and kept dwelling on the problem of Magnussen, excitement building now that he was sure there was a way to think their way through him, scrubbing his hands through his hair and thinking yes, but.

Moriarty was dead, and he’d be damned if he’d let another criminal mastermind knock down his house of cards any more than had been done.

Mycroft had kept Jim Moriarty in a cell for months, and it was only reasonable to say he probably hadn’t been allowed a cell phone, or his right hand man would have blown up a landmark a day in central London until he’d been released. That said, there was somewhere to put someone of Magnussen’s influence.

There were people, certainly, ready to stop appeasing tyrants. Idiots like John signed up for the war all the time, it had to be the same -- there was an MP in this bloody country willing to expose him.

*

After his shower, John’s brain was still skittering on too many tracks like an arachnid, and Sherlock was sitting in the exact same place he’d left him. John was almost amused. “You’re going to get bedsores,” he said, moving past him again to get to the kitchen.

“Roll me over, then.”

John laughed. It felt really good. “I need to go see Mary.”

“Oh?” Sherlock said.

“After you eat something, yeah,” John said. “Come sit at the table and let me ramble at you a little more before I go.”

Sherlock did as he was told, and with extreme grace, let John talk while he made a stir fry with minimal corrections. John put a bowl down in front of him and sat down.

“Your brother is afraid of him, or he wants us to think he is. Do you know what that’s about?”

“My brother, despite his faults, of which there are legions, does genuinely care for me. It’s something like an obsession, far beyond the usual degree of familial fondness. I suspect it is because he feels completely unable to make a connection with anyone less intelligent than himself, which does limit his prospects. If Magnussen threatens me, Mycroft would let England burn before letting it become an option.”

“So, you’re saying it’s real. That Mycroft votes how he wants, or whatever it is Mycroft does as a parking attendant, in a way that Magnussen approves of?”

Sherlock took a long moment to chase a snow pea around his plate with his fork. “Not exactly. Just that if there ever was a threat, he doesn’t take it lightly.” Sherlock chewed on his pitiful mouthful far too long before finally saying, “And that when Mycroft intends to deal with him, it will be very permanent.”

“He’s a bit like God,” John said, feeling calm at the prospect. “He’s terrible at keeping a convenient schedule.”

Sherlock looked surprised to be amused. “That, and other reasons,” Sherlock agreed, and finished his dinner, pink at the tips of his ears. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come be my friend on [tumblr](http://www.katiewont.tumblr.com) so we can talk about Johnlock. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I'm trash. But I'm doing my best.

Sherlock, mind ablaze and tearing through possibilities on the Magnussen case, had one tangent task to attend to after John went off on his mission to see Mary.

It was not off to a great start.

“I’m not speaking to you, Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock knew he’d betrayed Janine’s trust, applied his sexuality to her like a lever to move her out of the way. He hardly deserved any consideration from her, but to hear it felt like a pulled stitch.

He’d expected to see her in the hospital, not with any degree of certainty, but as far as shouting down someone who had manipulated and jilted you, doing it while they lay feeble as a kitten in a hospital bed, tied to a morphine drip seemed like it would be one of the more satisfying ways to do it.

“I understand,” Sherlock said, voice low but being conscientious not to apply it like a weapon. He did, in fact, owe her that. “but if you would listen for a moment, I would be in your debt if you would let me apologize and leave.”

Janine looked as she always did: tasteful and serene, like unpresumptuous money, every hair casually in place. “You’ve got a minute,” she said.

Sherlock flicked his eyes down, thinking of his homecoming, half a year ago now, when he’d only meant to make things better, but had instead hurt John, and then hurt him again while the first sting was still fresh. Janine didn’t mean half as much to him, but only because his regard for John was immeasurable. He had a healthy respect for her, and owed it to her to use what he’d learned from John to his situation with Janine.

Of course, half of his problem on return to London didn’t apply here: when he’d meant to surprise John, he’d been incandescently excited, and his levity had swallowed his tact.

“I used you,” he said, because taking ownership and being specific was number one on his to do list, closely followed by the apology, and then the honest explanation of his regard, the necessity of the deception: it might have gone a long way with his Watson if he’d left out the jokes at the expense of his facial hair in their entirety. “It was a nasty thing. I am so very sorry. You are a woman of substance and acuity, and although these past few months would not have happened had I not had Magnussen in my sights, I want you to know that I...”

When Sherlock looked at Janine, she wasn’t already looking at him. She was gazing casually at her nails. “Are you done?”

Sherlock inclined his head.

“What I don’t understand,” Janine said, in a quick jab, mobile mouth curled, “is how I befriended not one but  two  brilliant people not only interested in taking him down but  _ capable  _ of it  and  _ seemingly intent _ \-- that’s the kicker -- and not one, but  both of them  failed  _spectacularly_. ”

Sherlock’s jaw dangled from the hinge. “I’m not done yet.”

“Yeah,” she said, lilting voice and chin at a jaunty angle, “but you missed your big shot.”

“You,” he said, looking at her like the wonder she was.

“Me,” she agreed with a little grin. “I was actually embarrassed to realize you and I weren’t on the same page about my involvement. Did you really think that if I wasn’t playing you, you’d be able to get me to marry you after thirty days of dating?”

“Of course not,” he intoned. “But you’d hardly embarrass me by telling me that via video intercom.”

“Relying on ordinary people to avoid a scene,” Janine mused. She didn’t even look offended. If Sherlock hadn’t been giving his full attention, unintentionally and slowly enough that he hadn’t had time to notice and put a stop to it, to John, he might notice her in her own right. Unflappability had become the most important trait to him somewhere.

After a few moments of consideration, she made a little noise. “My brother does that.”

“Always effective to play on the boring sensibilities of the normal.” Sherlock agreed, mind firmly snagged on the more salient point: “You wanted us to take down Magnussen.”

“Me and the rest of the free world.”

*

“Timing was piss-poor,” Mary said.

“I’ll drink to that,” John muttered, hand clenching and unclenching, resting on the sofa between them, eyes resting on a silent telly. He’d come over to see her, to talk, but after standing in the doorway of a flat that he’d called home two weeks ago but now felt uneasy in, she’d hauled him to the interior.

“Seriously, though,” she said, voice pitching high with indignity and conviction, “after months of planning, I make a pregnant twenty story climb and you and Sherlock pick the same night? Are you sure he didn’t...”

John whipped his head. “What?”

“Just a thought,” Mary said, scowling. “I’ve had a lot of time to think, and I just think the coincidences were a bit much.

John’s brain had been in a rut since that night, where even casually existing seemed an insurmountable task, but he had been in a refreshing period of clarity since sparing with Bill the afternoon before. He almost laughed. “You think Sherlock somehow knew about your backwards

plan to come threaten Magnussen and came to what, get there first just to spite you?”

“No, but I find it hard to believe that there are any coincidences when you put so many inhuman geniuses in the same room,” Mary ticked off on her fingers, “Magnussen who has more sway over MP votes than anyone in the UK, Mycroft who seemed to have the largest share of power before I realized he was the low man on Magnussen’s totem pole, and Sherlock.”

John thought about that for a while. “What was your catylist? Why that night?”

“Convenience,” Mary said, “you were following Sherlock, and I wouldn’t have to worry about creating a story. The easiest lies are omissions.”

“And would you have killed him? If we had been out solving another case and you’d had time to finish what you came for?”

John made the mistake of breathing in, deeply, after catching the edge of a scent. Mary’s perfume had been a chemical trigger for his arousal for almost a year now, and he felt it settle heady in his lungs. Mary put a hand on her stomach and John swallowed hard to keep the inside and outside of himself from mixing.

“I was ready to improvise,” she said. “I needed to know what sort of evidence he had first.”

The possibilities uncurled before John Watson like a movie montage, all the paths they hadn’t taken. They’d solved a case together, the three of them, two months before the wedding, Mary, nimble on her feet and leading the chase through downtown London. She’d laughed, and the sound had drifted behind her like a trail of butterflies, and John and Sherlock had run into the sound, adrenaline and affection crashing through his veins and he’d thought,  _this_ ,  as clearly as anything. What were the odds that he'd gone from a wounded wreck to having more than he ever would have thought to ask for?

He’d thought,  _Holmes and Watsons_.  It sounded so right.

He has the same thought now, reaching out his hand to touch her at the elbow. “I wish things had gone differently,” he says, and he fucking means it. 

 

*

Sherlock had only meant to solve a quick mystery.

His proximity to the Magnussen case had muddled his head, from the completely unexpected sympathy he found himself in the middle of when he thought of Magnussen’s victims as he didn’t usually, to the fraying loyalties he had to Mary and John, and the fact that they were at odds, the fact that he’d -- again, unexpectedly -- quietly moved Mary from the white noise of John’s usual bed-partners into the warm sitting room of his mind palace where he left all the things he treasured, and she’d shot him, giving him just better than even odds… somehow he found himself unable to fire at full speed, couldn’t follow through trains of linear thought, walk through from vague idea into clarity while mapping out the consequences of each thought.

Instead, his thoughts fractured and left him holding only pieces, like all the files in his mind palace had been shredded and he was starting at tufts of paper:  _Mycroft / votes / A.G.R.A / telegrams / Janine / Lady Smallwood_ ,  and none of them had the right edges to put together into a semblance of order.

Mycroft had taught him all his life what to do in case of emergency, in case he didn’t have enough facts to make deductions that were not shifting sand beneath his feet, but starting over was working and neither was throwing out assumptions, and Sherlock’s rendez-vous with Janine which amounted to  _ more research  _ which was his brother’s favorite (he collected  status reports  like a gleeful money-counter, and each one brought him a brief flash of untarnished joy) but ultimately hadn’t given him the spark he needed to light the kindling in his mind, illumiate the answer he was sure he’d already stumbled upon.

Which was the point he’d decided to take a case via email, a simple enough affair, but one he thought was important because, horrifyingly, it was the sort of thing he cared about, which wasn’t new, but the fact that he couldn’t seem to tuck that away, quiet, was embarrassing beyond belief.

John Watson  knew he couldn’t let go of Lady Smallwood’s case, even besides Mary’s involvement, because he made her feel uncomfortable.  John  had probably drawn some conclusions about Sherlock’s childhood. Grown men didn’t typically call other grown men bullies, he’d realized an instant too late.

It was a young girl, this time, and there’d been a desperate email from a father in his inbox, pleading. It amounted to more of the same, nothing he hadn’t heard before, about suicidal youth and figuring out why. That sort of thing didn’t interest Sherlock: there was rarely any puzzle to it, just artless misery. Just parents desperate for some sort of answers, but the father had said,  _this isn’t like my Sarah_ ,  and Sherlock had snapped to attention long enough to realize that  his Sarah  was still alive, in a coma and possibly brain damaged and Sherlock had thought for a moment that just this once he would get involved.

Humiliatingly, for the first time since his transition into adulthood, when owning his own flat meant staying clean under Mycroft’s detail-oriented visits, he took a case, yearning for the thrill of emotional triumph at the end instead of the puzzle.

Which is how John found him, chin pinning one of his hands on the table, trawling through facebook with his free one. “It’s not what it looks like,” Sherlock blurted, like he was ever doing the thing he appeared to be doing.

“I should hope not,” John said, coming up behind him to lean in, amusement coming from his voice in warm waves and almost close enough for Sherlock to collect some of his heat, “ _ Maple Smith _ ?”

“I am pretending to be a young girl,” Sherlock said, as if this were a sensible, obvious thing, “to  win the friendship of other young girls.”

“Much worse than it looked at first glance, mate,” John said, and went to the fridge.

Sherlock took a breath. Claire-de-la-Lune, faint but present. He didn’t point it out, because John had been a bundle of nerves since the night Sherlock had been shot, and wasn’t it funny that he could think of it now and bile didn’t rise to his throat.

“Productive day? 

John grunted in the affirmative, rooting around in the fridge. “Got my job at the clinic back. Called Harry. Had a visit with Mary.” he paused, and Sherlock heard the drag of noise from the icebox as John pushed around Sherlock’s things in search of something no doubt tedious, like frozen veg. “You? What lead to you sitting with a fake facebook?”

“Elaborate bullying,” Sherlock said, eyes still glued to the string of messages. “The level of creativity that four A-Levels girls brought to the table is truly horrifying.”

John abandoned his domestic chore, pulling up a chair beside him, brightening. “That’s tits,” he said, remembering as Sherlock rarely did to comment on the dourness of the situation before he brought up how brilliant something was, “but it’s good to have something on that isn’t Magnussen.”

It was nice that John understood instinctually what Sherlock was reluctant to say. He went on, “In and out, yeah?”

Sherlock gave a sharp nod, and pointed to the square photo of a teen, slim and haughty, not classically beautiful but well proportioned. “This is Heather Dunderwaite...” he started, and John listened intently, eyes bright as Sherlock explained the truly bizarre way four girls had gone on an elaborate and time consuming mission, between personal affronts to a girl who by all accounts went from school to home and back again with very few detours, and none of the girls that had thrown in together attended the same school.

When he was done, he and John sat quietly. “Female malice is different beast altogether. At least we’re usually content just to hit each other.”

He might have disagreed with John, pointing out that he was relying on an untested stereotype, except that it lined up with his own anecdotal evidence, and he’d been trying to move away from whatever ideas John was prone to string together in his working-class brain about Sherlock, young and alone and unloved.

“So how do the four of them know each other?”

*

He’d been right -- and wrong. There were too much empty space between the girls, schools and districts and income. He’d started tracing their paths half-assuming he was coming up against

some sort of bullying victim exchange, something John called  _ Strangers on a Train _ .

It was John who’d squinted at his own computer screen and come to a conclusion. He swiveled the screen of his laptop, and Sherlock was momentarily distracted by him small hand curled around the corner of it before looking down at his screen. “That’s the bloke cropped out of Sarah’s pictures. She’s Michelle Rosa’s step-brother. Ugly breakup between the two?”

Sherlock leaned in, nose almost touching John’s smudged screen. John, ridiculous John, who poked at the screen with his fingers had left those smudges, Sherlock though, brain going stupid with John’s proximity, and then shook himself out of it. “Ah,” he said, seeing it. The arm was wearing a watch that he hadn’t been in the shot where he’d been cropped out, but there was a quirk of the ring finger that spoke of an old break on both. He was a little taken aback that John had seen it.

Revenge for a sibling. “Does that seem like a likely motive?” Sherlock scoffed.

John gave him a flat look. “You and your brother are fuck-off scary. I’m pretty sure if you hadn’t made it home, in one piece, there would have been a war.”

“Sentiment,” Sherlock said, dry, and John rolled his eyes. John, Sherlock noticed, was wearing a jacket he’d often worn early on in their acquaintance, before he’d put on the homey weight from months of being married. He’d lost the softness of domestic bliss around his middle. His mouth feels dry.

“Sentiment,” John says, eyes soft, and his face doesn’t arrange itself out of fondness when he goes on, “you know, what you spent two years letting yourself get battered for.” John’s hand moved towards him, tentative, and hovered over his shoulder. Sherlock’s breath caught in his chest as he felt and squelched the urge to lean into the touch, bridge the gap like a houseplant getting a better angle at the lamp.

Pathetic , the Mycroft in his mind palace snarled at him, the voice of reason, always. His brother who had the world in his pocket and still had to chide Sherlock out of doing silly sentimental things. “Brothers!” Sherlock nearly shouted, jumping up, world coalescing into glorious order from chaos. “John Watson you are extraordinary.”

He thought for a moment he could have grabbed John to kiss him -- nothing untowards, but squarely on the forehead as he had with Molly and Mrs. Hudson and Mary -- but the intent would be different, and John would know. John always knows.

“Brothers?” John asked, hand falling to his side. Sherlock did not have time to regret it, so he left the hollow box in the foyer of his mind palace to be dealt with later.

“I’m not the only one that has a nearly omnipotent sibling,” Sherlock said, cryptically. He'd been unforgivably slow, allowed The Watson Problem to take up all the space in his head. That goes in a box, too. 

“Come along, John.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit at katiewont.tumblr.com


End file.
